


sustenance, blessed sustenance

by Alias (anafabula)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Banned Together Bingo 2020, Beholding Avatar Powers (The Magnus Archives), Body Horror, Canon-Typical Beholding, Canon-Typical Coercion, Canon-Typical Violence, Compulsion, Dark Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Disordered Eating, Dreams and Nightmares, Harm to Children, Harm to adults also, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Psychiatric Institutionalization, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, It's a Venn diagram., It's a season 4 feral Archivist fic lads, Monster Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Other, Post-Episode: e155 Cost of Living (The Magnus Archives), Spiders, Stalking, Statement Hunger (The Magnus Archives), Trauma, dark jon show me the forbidden less-restrictive eating habits, eldritch feeding kink, predatory behavior, things that should not be vegan include: cats and jon sims
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:21:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28746105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anafabula/pseuds/Alias
Summary: “You have something to tell me,” Jon says. It isn’t really a question, even if he didn’t know until he said it, scraping in his throat like a whetstone working inside of him.Her gaze had been flitting around him, past him, trying to see her way to a story that ends with her own escape. But she’s looked him in the eyes now, and she won’t be looking away again.Kinkmeme prompt: Jon hunting for a snack. The more Dead Dove, the better.
Relationships: The Beholding & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, The Beholding/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist (arguably)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 55
Collections: Rusty Kink





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> > and in the ever-present light,  
> and in my ever-growing need  
> if a man should crest the ridge  
> he's gonna have to watch me feed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fills "`Almost Porny, But Not`". Hopefully in a successful manner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kinkmeme posting was a rough draft; there's substantial expansions here. Or expansions that feel substantial to me, at least.
> 
> Also I literally just realized that doing some bird-related horror would have been a pun the OP technically walked into first. Damn.
> 
> The title and full-fic epigraphs are from [Emerging](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54jV5nf3k6M), which I _highly_ recommend. More warnings detail for this chapter in the end notes.

Jon hadn’t thought ahead any further than to wonder if he could still get drunk. After what he’d seen it seemed the time to find out if there ever was one. Anyone would need a drink at minimum after that, he’d rationalized, even if they weren’t affected by being a bystander the way Jon in particular was. 

(God, he’d thought it might hit him harder from the outset and he’d thought it might balance out, but her _eyes—_ )

So far the answer seems liable to be ‘no’, he thinks. He thinks; who knows what else his metabolism does now. He’d picked up and headed a seemingly random direction, on the Tube and then by foot, aimlessly looking to get _away_ from the Institute for once and deal with how unnatural that feels for him now only after; had a brief thought toward not getting lost, before he realized that was irrelevant. Of course it was. 

And now he’s several drinks in and it’s finally occurring to him what a man who looks like he does – anyone, really – drinking alone on a weekday evening… well… _looks_ like. Probably that’s what got the young woman whose party’s still stayed in line of sight to try to talk to him a couple times: pity, bit of nosiness. Maybe more than a bit. Though if it is she’d hid it well.

(He does still like whiskey, apparently. So that’s relatively nice. Jon doesn’t like to face up to how much he finds himself counting up features he has in common with the man who had his name last like he’s looking for common ground to make small talk with some stranger. Facing it would mean admitting that’s how he thinks about his identity at all, let alone dealing with how pathetic the little endorphin hit when he gets an answer ‘right’ really, truly is.) 

She reminds him vaguely of Georgie, Jon keeps thinking – the woman who’d tried to talk to him, who doesn’t seem to like her friends all that much. Less Georgie last year and willing to give him the time of day than maybe when they’d met. He’s not sure why exactly, when they look nothing alike. For a while he gets himself convinced that it’s just rumination on his part, the back of his mind cheating in the idea that it doesn’t count as obsessing over the Melanie-shaped hole in his Knowing if he gets there by way of his ex. Has himself almost all the way convinced right up to the point when the woman he doesn’t know gets up, apparently to leave; at which point it finally occurs to Jon that the illusion of resemblance is just courtesy of the fact that no other way’s occurred to him to articulate having realized someone’s trying to pick him up.

No accounting for taste, he thinks, faintly dazed in a way that might make him reconsider his assessment of his alcohol tolerance. Also she’s leaving.

Leaving, alone and – out the back, actually, Jon hadn’t realized that door was an exterior door, what with most of his point being to get somewhere he hasn’t been before – and that’s not why he gets up to follow her. Not why he’s not sure he could bring himself to stop to pay off his tab if he hadn’t handled that already. He’s… not sure why he does, in fact, in a way that would be concerningly familiar if it weren’t all of a piece in the same interminable fugue state. But there’s nothing actually _stopping_ him from getting to his feet, and heading out, and something in the back of his skull says: important. This is important.

Not like his own ideas have that great of track record, really. (But it’s – no, that’s wrong, isn’t it? This is his idea as well, all the way down. It has to be.) 

It’s an alley on the other side of the door, turns out; red brick, assorted plant life no one really asked for present nonetheless, altogether unremarkable. She startles to see him. “Oh,” she says, weight shifting backwards with obvious, practiced subtlety, even with her face in that open and breezy smile, “hello, are we headed the same way or—”

“ _You have something to tell me,_ ” Jon says. It isn’t really a question, even if he didn’t know until he said it, scraping in his throat like a whetstone working inside of him.

There’s a long enough pause before it takes for a handful of things to happen: she says, “Oh God,” under her breath, eyes gone tight at their edges, and Jon sways on his feet a little, suddenly incapable in the face of having something, _anything—_

The hunger he’d been learning to almost ignore, to not think of feeling better than, that hollow, chilling, gutted ache, it’s _all_ he can think about with the prospect of reprieve at hand, and it’s like there’s nothing holding him up in response. (Like a puppet with his strings cut, but – that’s still not right. It’s still him. No strings, no redeeming features. No wherewithal to let that do anything like stop him.) He has to steady himself with one hand flat on the wall for how much facing it altogether _hurts_ , and then – oh, that’s funny, really, that it means he’s physically boxing her in, just by having fallen forward.

“You do, yes,” he prompts, gently, and she takes a sharp, unsteady breath in. Her gaze had been flitting around him, past him, trying to see her way to a story that ends with her own escape. But she’s looked him in the eyes now, and she won’t be looking away again.

“I, I was like twenty-three, you have to understand,” she starts, voice even. Her eyes were already wide; now they’re beginning to glaze over with tears. (Jon wonders how long that’ll last her; he wonders – no, no, that next thought is _definitely_ inappropriate, Christ.) “No one’s stable when they’re twenty-three, really. It’s not – fair.”

There’s a little pause where she’s still looking for a response urging her to go on, even though she doesn’t want to, even though it’s long past redundant. Jon would’ve, once. Instead, he catalogs that too, mouth slightly open and his own breath coming in whispers: the number of heartbeats it seems she can manage to hold off, trying to carry that unspecified indignation forward into defying him. The tears accumulating on her eyelashes as she blinks just the bare human minimum. The building fear of him as the present supersedes her well-worn trauma _immediately_ , the speed and simplicity of it making his head spin. Like she’d been waiting for just this. Like he’s all but late. He almost has to bite back a moan and he can’t even spare the attention to feel something about the effort.

She’d had what wasn’t quite a skin condition and wasn’t quite anything else, at first. Little patches on the insides of her wrists, where the pressure sat whenever she was typing on a keyboard. Independent of keyboard – because at first she’d thought it was something her aging laptop and the library machines had in common, like a sudden-onset metal allergy. Like something that shouldn’t have followed the paths of her veins, visibly. 

Then she’d begun to feel it reaching in and back inside her forearm; not fast enough to feel movement, just steady, hostile growth. Something solid, branching like veins, raised under the skin, inflexible. Not carpal tunnel or the like, even though she’d hoped for a while – had begun to hope for something that was reasonable, that wasn’t strangely rough and catching at the inside of her skin when she stayed up nights unable to keep her hands from herself. 

What Jon feels isn’t quite touching and isn’t quite eating and isn’t quite drinking this in, not really, but there’s enough of each for the sensory detail to go down easy. His lips buzz with static as the space inside him he’d all but unconsciously left open for hunger pains is summarily filled. He doesn’t feel complete immediately but his eyes would almost water with the feeling of that prospect even being conceivable if they weren’t busy doing something else, the rich fullness naturally meted out at one second per second so there’s not even some kind of impending bloated discomfort to hold him to account. 

She could never quite get anyone to see more than prominent veins, a tendency towards scratching – not the raised, hard lines she felt. Not the abrasive texture that her skin muted. Not the need to get the offending foreign matter _out._ Where she began to see occasional, surreal little twigs tearing through the skin eventually, breaking off under the slightest pressure and so leaving only the scarcest of evidence, other people just saw scabs.

She stopped asking. Started, unconsciously and then less so, making plans, once it finally sank in that there was no version of this so real as to mean she wouldn’t evidently be forced to wrestle with it alone.

And no one will ever let her live the scars down, certainly wouldn’t at the time, but if she’d ever _had_ the taste for self-injury she’s lost it. Between what it took out of her to grit her teeth and dig her fingers around the rough but blood-slicked bark and pull, and being blamed for it, after. After she’d gotten enough leverage to tear the lot of it out, increasingly horrible acts of contortionism and more blood than she thought she should’ve been conscious for – but she saw it through to the end, until she’d gotten all of it out, dragging from inside her veins, ripping up her nerves, somehow still maintaining enough motor control to keep hooking her fingers – later teeth – into new places to pull. She’d gotten through it, barely. 

Every time she blinks, just by bare necessity, there’s a little hiccup in what Jon takes in through his eyes, enough to bring him back to his body. Enough that the awareness of how the sensation builds from suddenly-not-bad through good to all but unspeakable is inextricable from her statement, his own reactions woven in. It fills him and thrills him, tempered beautifully with how much of her life she’s spent hiding this story from anyone at all, how she feels to watch him enjoy it and have her lips keep moving regardless.

Her housemates had found her in a pool of blood and, of course, nothing else. Nothing meaningful. Nothing to show for herself when they did what would’ve been logical about it even if they weren’t panicked.

So – no. Acts of injury against her own body just for the sake of it are entirely beyond her, a conviction that’s sunk in through the years instead of lessening, reiterated and reinforced with the queasy resentment she feels every time it slips back into her conscious attention how much of her daily life is quietly curtailed by the need to hide those ropy, mocking scars. Not with what she’d finally taken out of herself. Not with how sick it made her feel to parrot that narrative so she could get out of being committed. She _couldn’t_.

She’s been crying for a good while now, of course, shoulders shaking like her voice isn’t as it glides to the end. Stowing sharp broken-glass sobs for later, when she’ll have that kind of leeway again, when her voice is done being bent to a straightforwardly more important end. All circumscribed by what would be Jon’s shadow in different lighting, up against the wall. 

Jon breathes out in a long, helplessly indulgent sigh as she goes quiet. “Lovely,” he says, soft and more vulnerable than intended, genuinely appreciative, before he realizes from the contrast to the hesitant but now-irrepressible crying that he’d spoken out loud. 

Ah. Well.

She stammers something Jon thinks is almost uncalled for even given his own behavior, really, amidst her utterly nonthreatening demands he not follow her, shoving past him easily and taking off at an uneven run. Jon less lets her get past than is too sluggish to resist, body more concerned with turning inward to process than with, say, his own limbs, so it’s even out of his hands to let her go. No reason not to, though, even if he’d had the will to spare.

He watches her go for a moment, the edge taken off his thinking by how he can’t not bask in feeling sated – he feels so full _he_ could almost cry with it, not because it’s more than he’s ever had inside him before but because he’d spent right up until this moment diligently aware he’d be malnourished, apparently, if not outright starving, for the rest of his foreseeable life – so it takes him until she’s been out of sight to realize why she bothered. It doesn’t occur to him that he could want something else – that she would think he’d want something else. 

It does occur to him that she won’t know how little it means that she thinks she got away for at least a couple hours yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra warning for this chapter: the statement-giver was institutionalized on the basis of people believing that her statement was actually mental health issues; combined supernatural self-harm and accidental natural gaslighting.
> 
> Fic planned to update from here on... daily-ish? One hopes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fills "`Naughty Children`" for BTB, if not in the way I originally expected to do so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh I sure do love Jon eating food. (Season 4 stressed me out... more than bears getting into here, really, it's the ironic reason I couldn't fill this prompt until now.) 
> 
> This one kind of flirts with being beyond-canon-typical harm to children? It's not like it's outside existing scope but it's more centered onscreen than we've usually seen, I think.

Jon is shaken, eventually, once he remembers to be. Or at least he remembers that he should be. He feels weighed down in a way that anchors him when he should be unstable, the radiating warmth and fullness of _not starving not starving not starving_ making any other concern a bit of a footnote. He’ll resent that, he tells himself. Just needs to remember how. He’s got a bit of a start, he thinks, with the anxiety creeping up his spine, the early sense of – well, appropriately enough, the sense that he’s going to be caught out. It doesn’t have claws that sink into him and gouge at his wellbeing. It just sort of itches.

Even this far into the evening-turned-night summer is vaguely inhospitable to human life, and so it should be to Jon by extension; he’s not sure it counts as getting some air, really, if he heads back where he belongs on foot, and no route back is going to be deserted. But it still seems like it might be advisable overall – fuzzy as the journey is at this point, he got here by transit, and surely, if he retraces his steps that literally, he’s at greater risk of cornering passengers than passerby? They’re right _there_ , if he wanted to risk the audience he’d not even have to stop them because they’re already locked in with him. 

Which would be bad. It would be very bad. He is aware – stresses it to himself – that this is an undesirable outcome, to be avoided.

It’s with this logic in mind that he takes off on the sidewalk. Takes pains to give anyone he might brush past as wide a berth as possible, enough that he _can_ distantly tell that it’s noticeably odd – that’s fine. That’s fine, and this comfortable pace is fine, is almost normal. Would be a nice contrast when he doesn’t really get out of the literal basement that much these days if it weren’t for the rest of the context of this excursion. He feels too _nice_ to even be all that bothered by the muggy air, so much more preoccupied by the lovely and tender warmth inside him, where it matters.

Where it matters. Where the reflexes he has for value tell him that something matters, is worth noticing and worth mulling over, the way his steps slow to a stop before he actually sees the boy wedging himself into a shop doorstep just beyond the sidewalk.

He gets overlooked all the time, Jon’s sure, studying him idly before he’s noticed – the usual human tendency to gloss over homelessness, the obvious additional discomfort signaling that he’s _new_ at it and so even more distractingly pitiable if someone let themselves have to be a decent person about having seen him, even the fact that he’s a small body to look over. Too young for even a narrative that would make sense for a particularly traditional runaway.

A narrative – Jon has to. He _has to_. It barely even registers as conscious thought, insinuating himself into the boy’s field of vision and realizing he’s just blinking himself fitfully awake, capturing his gaze between one opening of the eyes and the next so he can’t even object. Or turn away. Or scream. It’s just a settled question from there on out.

“ _What’s wrong?_ ” Jon asks, the sort of thing he could almost convince himself he hadn’t meant like that. Almost.

He wouldn’t have had the time, though, because this one comes uneven but immediately, waking up straight into it even as Jon watches his skinny hands shake. It’s so fresh it takes Jon’s breath away – the reason the boy had decided living on the streets was still a lesser evil, that decision itself still raw in his mind. The memory still new enough that part of him wants to throw it at someone, anyone, just in case by sheer repetition someone might believe him. 

And admittedly that’s succeeded for him, here and now. Just not in the way a person would want to think. 

(No one likes having to think of belief and empathy and sympathetic action as all being separate processes, Jon finds, even he used to struggle with it. Not so much now, though, not any more.)

This one, then, is transparently Web, so fitting that it feels like mockery – or else like it’s been gift-wrapped. The ways his family had been… bad, to begin with, but only in a normal sort of way, not enough to look outside oneself for, just enough to hide; the way the isolation from doing so wasn’t quite right, even stranded out in the more hypnotizingly interminable sort of not-quite-town whose crushing normalcy suffocates outside criticism anyway. Smothers it under the kind of script that says: this is fine; this is ordinary; there is no such thing as imaginable intervention, let alone the need for it.

He was a younger sibling, openly an accident – not something it had occurred to anyone to ever hide as opposed to treat as funny and slightly rueful trivia – raised all his life in that one neat, pale house, all newly-painted walls without a sense of personality to speak of. Certainly without any manner of independent, skittering things, and they’d show right up if they were to trespass. 

The pale walls were, oddly enough, exactly the color of cobweb, he found, once it mattered. Blended right in.

His older sister – the one who’d actually been wanted – was young enough to still live at home but narrowly, old enough for her first proper adult boyfriend, and the boy was sure (with parental assistance) that was why he disliked the man so much, that he was being petty and childish about it. Half disliking having it highlighted that he _was_ a child still and half resenting his sister moving on to a life largely without him, even if the process was stymied somewhat by not being able to afford to live alone quite yet. 

Didn’t change that the boyfriend rubbed him the wrong way, though, and every now and then seemed to have _something_ going on out the corner of his eyes – something suspicious, skittering, illuminated in the negative space of the observer finding he couldn’t think clearly about it or spell out what he’d seen. The boy wondering if his sister was all right as she became more withdrawn – but, then again, he was coming off weirder himself, wasn’t he? Not particularly pleasant company even if she didn’t have something more engaging to be pursuing for her own grown-up reasons – and how he’d know if she wasn’t, with the way blanks in his memory got overwritten with the overwhelming sense that things he couldn’t remember were definitely just fine.

He’d thought he was just a horrified witness, for months – witness to what, he didn’t even know, given it hardly seemed to bother anyone else. Had thought he’d escaped firsthand experience, felt guilty about it and the resulting lack of intervention he was presumably capable of even, in between telling himself it was just the cumulative effects of sleeping too poorly for too long, working himself up willfully and then dealing poorly with the results. He’d alternated between those two ways of separating himself from the question right up until the middle of the night when, mouth half-open as always as spiders smaller than his incisors traipsed back and forth across the moat of his lower lip, frozen but for his eyes and his racing suddenly-contextualized thoughts – he woke up. Saw the glint of cobweb above him and eyes watching him both in the pre-dawn light and couldn’t even breathe faster for the fear of it. 

The next morning was perfectly normal. It took him a week, circling around his own thoughts, not looking at things head-on to save his life, to even pack a bag.

Something small and particular inside of Jon (and is that Jon, without the rest of it all? Can he be separated and pared into bits after all?) feels like it’s resonating with this story at a different, higher pitch, less satisfaction and more sympathy. There’s a lot different in the boy’s own burgeoning phobia, but Jon remembers what that was like and it’s striking the way this victim’s still caught in the formative grip of it, not even done forming the neural pathways for spending the rest of his life convinced at every opportunity that he’s about to die. Every tickle in his throat a little harbinger: tiny legs, tinier cobwebs, the not-quite-sublimated desire for what he _knows_ is inside him to at least make itself _knowable_ , be obvious, banish the common-sense doubt, always flanked with cringing horror that this means he wants it, that it’s going to be his fault. 

It makes Jon want to touch him, playing off the tingling of his skin to give it an actionable target, making the memory that much more concrete, that much harder to ever find a livable distance from. 

So not particularly managing the human sympathy, no. More a little treat in terms of narrative detail. It’s not escaped Jon’s notice – at least not for long, when it comes up – that he merely remembers being afraid of spiders, nothing more visceral or that makes sense to him now. Right now he _wants_ , like palpating with his fingertips would shake free some telltale cluster of skittering and growing things.

That is, he reminds himself, with decorum if not quite disgust, _entirely_ inappropriate, and if Jon weren’t busy listening as his skin lights up all over he’s sure he’d make himself feel sick.

After the boy flees there’s no further resolution – there’s the tantalizing promise of future resolution, rather, Jon having pulled him aside in the middle of his story instead. He doesn’t pay any mind to what direction the boy leaves in, scared away from his tentatively usual haunts as if to add insult to injury; like the woman before him, Jon will catch up soon enough. 

Jon wonders if he’ll see change, over time – if he’ll get that idea of what exactly the outcome of those half-tangible tiny spiders is going to be. If he’ll see them warp the victim like he’d feared, or an outcome he may mistake for a mercy killing until it’s set in, or instead witness the Web do something else entirely. How much Jon will be able to extrapolate and eke out novelty from his dreams. Whether that’s a bad thing; it’s not like he can help it, really.

Another thing that’s inappropriate, sparking a horrid kind of morbid amusement that does at least help him turn his attention away – his steps slow and stumbling, like he’d ever successfully gotten drunk; like it’s almost beyond him to navigate his body when he’s better-fed than a gangly suggestion of skin and bones – it occurs to him with inevitable certainty that it’s just as well he didn’t take this statement in an official capacity. The boy hadn’t given his age but recent harms in context and Beholding both provide. 

It would’ve been illegal for Jon to fill out the actual forms. Not like there was any prospect of parental permission incoming, after all.

He’s not sure that would have _stopped_ him, if by some fluke the boy had come into the Institute instead. Jon went so far out of his way for this – unintentionally, unintentionally – tonight; he’s not sure how he could do anything but accept it if someone were to walk straight into the Archives of their own ostensible free will. 

Didn’t used to appreciate it enough back when they did, he thinks. From the same rote, logical perspective as reminds him about the more conventional reaction to hating spiders, what process the trauma and fear is supposed to cause-and-effect lead to, he can remember _why_ , especially when he stretches himself to. But he can’t grasp the emotions, not really, or relate to the prospect. On a level before conscious evaluation comes into it he doesn’t understand what his past self’s _problem_ was, notes – less resentfully than he might have otherwise, given ameliorating circumstances – how much of a waste it feels that he’d _ever_ tried to pull away. 

After a little while (surely at least indulging in how full and relaxed he feels after is basically harmless? Keeps him from turning on anyone else, even), he does remember to get moving, the easy fluid steps a level of comfort in his skin that should once have belonged to someone else. Remembers, too languid to beat it into himself conceptually the way he should, that he meant to be heading _home._

At least there he can – at least anyone who interacts with him normally knows what they’re getting into. Either came in willingly or knows to call him on this sort of thing.

Not that _anything_ like this is going to come up again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~bad and naughty children get put in the spiders wiggler. innocent children who did nothing to deserve this _also_ get put in the spiders wiggler! spiders wiggler is for e v e r y o n e~~
> 
> General note for this fic, that hopefully isn't too presumptuous to say: on the off chance anyone wants to write one or more of the statements or possible victim perspectives verbatim - someone asked if I was going to and I don't think I have it in me but I love the idea - absolutely go for it, I would be endlessly flattered.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fills "`Puberty`", in context.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The context is, like, 90% me being mean about my OC’s acne. 
> 
> I hadn't originally planned this as "the fic where Jon gets to feel old for once" - although I did try to make every statement in some way unlike ones expected or fulfilled in canon, as a treat - but given how much his age seems/seemed to bother him, this pattern is _sending me._

So walking didn’t work, Jon thinks. (Tells himself, because it certainly _feels_ like _something—_ ) 

On the… very slightly bright side, he thinks, that should be it for him for ages, surely. Right now it feels like this is going to last forever, the rich, decadent satiety of it. If he can get through the inevitable confrontation – however he gets through the inevitable confrontation – at least he’ll be set for waiting out the results. The… 

This is supposed to be the last time, he remembers. Not sometimes. Not rarely. The last. The last time he won’t _hurt_ , like this. But for all the feeling that he couldn’t possibly feel better-fed than the nearly absurd luxury of taking two people live like that – his mind slides right off the prospect of trying, of _having_ to make that meal last the rest of his life.

Cross that bridge when he comes to it, he figures, ruefully, or as ruefully as he can manage when negative and future-facing emotions don’t seem to be able to operate under their own power for long. 

He doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes getting on the train, studiously keeps his gaze at about knee level and to the left. It would come naturally to him, usually, or it used to. Instead his eyes keep drifting whenever his attention lapses, wandering up towards the handful of passengers, seeking eye contact. Pupil to pupil. Instead of being hateful to him it’s just the most natural thing in the world.

Maybe it would be easier if he could lodge himself into a corner and be visibly uncomfortable with the reach of his limbs, the inevitability of being a physical body competing with space for others. Then he’d be avoiding people’s eyes as a further apology for his own technically-real presence. But he can’t seem to compress himself like that, and it’s late enough and offset from even the unreasonable sort of shift work hours that nothing’s forcing him to, and so he almost sprawls – not quite in any seat but his own but certainly enough to make the prospect of taking the nominally empty one unpleasant to any reasonable person. Even before taking into account that the other passenger in that hypothetical is him. 

In this way he does manage to keep more or less to himself, even if that takes all his attention – which is _good_ , presumably, keeps him a healthier kind of uncomfortably self-aware, instead of just relaxing back into sensation with the added lulling rhythm of the train – for a decent amount of time. 

Then he looks up, another guilty drift of the gaze before he’d surely collect himself again, and it’s different, because someone is _staring_ at him.

They’re some variety of university student, he knows immediately, unsure if he even has to Know with that combination of threadbare clothes, obviously self-dyed hair, and defensive, faux-comfortable poise. On the other side of adolescence from the boy Jon had just fed from but barely, round face dusted lightly with acne and spine self-consciously straight, some large parcel folded against their chest and highlighting how awkward the half-turns at the waist and neck that have brought them to face him really are. And they are _looking_ at him, eyes too busy being wide to manage any true expression, all their attention turned on him in discomfort, in invitation. Jon can’t tear his gaze away once he looks back.

He thinks, dimly: at least he’s not looking away _at_ anyone else? He thinks: at least he hasn’t said anything yet; whatever happens isn’t going to be public.

He knows: none of this is any particular consolation; couldn’t be him if it were.

By that point it’s all but out of his hands to know where their upcoming stop is – still nowhere near getting him back to the Institute; how much time did Jon _lose_ , earlier? – and to get off one in advance. He feels their sense of relief watching him go like a physical thing, ripples of cool water lapping against his turned back.

This walk’s shorter, and so much easier. Strolling, really.

The house is obviously shared, and between people who don’t know how to take care of one themselves at that; the occupants still almost definitely think they’ve gotten lucky, Jon doesn’t really need to Know, given the state of the housing market he’s well enough out of at this point. (He should be going _home_ , he thinks, no bite to it whatsoever, hands and face tingling with anticipation. He feels almost bloated, without the negative subtext that should entail. It does less than nothing to dissuade him.) The fast-ebbing scant natural light’s kind to the inhabitants, at least, if they’ve started caring about such things yet, makes the place look more presentable.

By the time the student’s made their way home, Jon’s gotten himself comfortable between them and the door. Part of him rues the fact that this meant giving up the chance to make them feel followed, holding back maybe half a block, ratcheting up the sense of foreboding instead of stabilizing it with a false reprieve. But it’s not practical. This is nice too.

He Knows there’s enough ambient light for them to be particularly transfixed by the oil-slick sheen of tapetum in his eyes, when they do arrive, because they know it. They freeze, eyes so wide they could be mirroring him, face visibly breaking into clammy sweat that’ll make their spots worse by the end of the week. Least of their problems, presumably, but – it’s a high-contrast sort of thing, pale as they are and gone paler with fear. 

(They do not drop the ungainly, heavy-looking book still held tight to their chest, or even shift their grip.)

Circling around so he’s got them backed up against the door instead without ever having the opportunity to fumble the lock open and bolt inside – without even being able to try – is trivial, feels natural. Jon holds their gaze, curious and expectant, and that’s enough, that does it, turns them around him to his liking like the gravitational pull of a star.

There’s something inevitable about this, more than anything else tonight – maybe more than anything he can remember. They were _expecting him._ He doesn’t know how that could possibly happen. Even aside from consumption – intensifying it – he wants to understand why.

Jon doesn’t even have to prompt them to start speaking, the sense of tone underneath what comes out of their mouth split halfway between a more natural tendency toward flat affect and a barely-suppressed panic attack’s scream. There’s no easing into it at all. It’s like they’ve just been waiting to give this up to him, rehearsing their own experience, the sort of fluid engagement with giving a statement Jon’s heard maybe once and never with personal fear. 

And it’s _very_ personal. They’d been barely an occult dabbler – the kind of person Jon used to look down on doing his masters’, and then continued to look down on after but at least from a greater distance – more interested in aesthetics than anything else, surrounded by people for whom even that was edgy enough to validate that sort of behavior. Partial to antiquing, though, on a related note, even on the barely-a-shoestring budget their lifestyle necessarily entailed. 

Partial to pretty books, too, so the dream journal had been just a no-brainer.

They’ve never been the type for nightmares, they explain – had been – plaintively, like it matters whether Jon believes them; like he ever wasn’t going to. Never the type for interesting dreams at all, even, as far as impulse-buys it was in character but well on the frivolous side even for their hobby. What on earth were they going to _put_ in it?

This proved not to be a problem, as the book wrote itself. Simple little things, at first, in elegant handwriting they could’ve convinced themself was what they’d earn with diligent enough practice in penmanship if it didn’t always come an evening in advance – but then again, they rationalized, they might as well be priming themself about it, reading the entry for a dream and falling asleep with it matter-of-factly on their mind. 

This should be too much, Jon thinks, or at least gestures loosely at thinking. There shouldn’t be enough gaps inside him to be comfortably filled, warm and solid and well and tingling with further anticipation. Perfectly content with how well it’s guaranteed to be coming. 

At first they were somewhat enchanted with the prospect even: running their hand fondly over the inset glass at the center of the cover, wondering what they were going to be stuck with tonight. That was when the dreams were benign, or close to, quiet little flickers of image and surreal scene. 

They were even funny, sometimes. Largely enjoyable, albeit not interesting enough – or developed enough – to share with any third party, even if they’d been the type to talk about their dreams. Little genre pastiches that grew eerie so gradually they didn’t mind. So gradually they genuinely can’t testify to when the dreams took a turn for the nightmarish, where that dividing line was. Their only hint towards chronology is the way it coincided with the entries getting longer, more detailed, from sparse summary to a narration that all but luxuriated in itself, proportionate exactly to how much they didn’t want to spend any time – let alone more every day – reading such content at all. 

Jon hisses in a breath that comes back out as a sigh. 

They’d seen him coming, in their dreams, and the recollection of that dread is like a caress – they’d seen what the nightmare-flashback version of this encounter would look like for weeks before falling into the rip current of recognition and catching Jon’s eye on the train. They’d read the highlights of their impending experience in neat handwriting like they’d only wished they had in real life and words they’d never thought, let alone written; in invasive, loving detail, slowly making sense with sheer repetition. It’s almost like they’ve been preparing themself for him in the aftermath as well, just _ruminating_ on what’s to come, practicing the fear of him like a skill, the dread of seeing that experience for themself as built on the sick unease of seeing it described and the sense of inevitability making it preemptively real. 

Maybe it would get better, like a fever temporarily breaking, if they could get their mind off the prospect, but they can’t even make themself leave the book at home, at this point. Something about the idea that another person might read it, might see their helplessness and terror. Or – almost worse, even though it should be better; shouldn’t it? – might _take it_ , and it would start writing the other person’s dreams instead, just like that. Something else about the irrational conviction it has value, overriding their own desires. They carry it, careful with the unwieldy thing, everywhere they go.

Jon can’t take anything more from them but this and he almost wants to try, if he could imagine how – something about the future-orientated nature of it makes up for his usual disinterest in other people’s reiterated fear of his master, or maybe it’s just the single-minded focus with which this is fear of _him_. 

He doesn’t have to tell them they’ll be right to expect him, that their horrified faith will pan out; but he almost wants to anyway. Can’t quite get the words out, or see reason to, the way his awareness wants to turn inward and bask in this feeling, just barely on the pleasant side of the line of being stuffed full. He’s heavy and light at once, and so gorgeously embodied, without a single sensory downside undermining the feeling for him.

They fumble the door open wordlessly and get it locked besides before it occurs to him, still lingering lazily on the doorstep, that he probably should’ve tried to take the book back with him, actually, for the Institute’s sake. Maybe later, he thinks, albeit a little dishonestly even to himself. That would be the responsible thing to do, the prosocial silver lining – get it off their hands, contained in Artifact Storage and understood and unlikely to do this to anyone else.

Like he has that sort of intervention in him.

He’s incontrovertibly gorged himself at this point. He knows. He _knows_. He should hardly have it in him to want anything else even if he’d abandoned morality deliberately as opposed to by his own apparent incompetence in holding on.

And it’s absurd to him, immediately after he has the thought, to have wondered what would happen if he looked up Melanie’s not-yet-updated personnel file to find out what home she’d left A&E to get back to. He already Knows. It’s neither a difficult reach nor a particularly subtle hint.

He reels on his feet a little – so beautifully whole and warm, too full of life to stand still without a good reason – just waiting to take the first step.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The statement in this chapter is based on [tweets from](https://twitter.com/min_of_sleep/status/1171620281766600705) [the Ministry of Sleep](https://twitter.com/min_of_sleep/status/1171623869083463681).
> 
> Thank you to everyone who’s commented, or who may in the future! That is, as you likely know by now, what I’m about.

**Author's Note:**

> > but no one's ever gonna come  
> and nobody's gonna know  
> I will sail home again,  
> concealed among the upright-walking men  
> to know that sleeping bodies hide  
> sweet things inside


End file.
